


whatever here that's left of me is yours (just as it was)

by cryptidgay



Series: things you said / blaseball prompt fics [5]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Butch/Femme, F/F, He/Him Lesbian Character, Lesbian Finn James, Lesbian Kennedy Loser, Minor Character Death, Reunions, Season 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28184340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidgay/pseuds/cryptidgay
Summary: It’s not that Finn expects them to leap back into… whatever it was they were, before. It’s difficult to expect something as undefined as that. But there’s still something there; beyond the simple consistency of Kennedy being Kennedy, beyond the gentle way he’d asked her if she wanted to come back to his house after the game. The war against the Crab Mother had been long, longer than she’d been there for, but wherever Kennedy was was always a safehouse; him with his medic’s kit and his brave face and his seemingly boundless love for the people around him. It hasn't changed in the decade-plus in between then and now.She feels safer here than she thought she would anywhere above water, after so long below.(Finn James comes home.)
Relationships: Kennedy Loser/Finn James
Series: things you said / blaseball prompt fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046602
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	whatever here that's left of me is yours (just as it was)

**Author's Note:**

> hello! some background info you should know for this:  
> — the city of baltimore rose up and killed their god (known variably as the mother crab, the olde one, debrah, etc) about ten years prior to the first season of internet blaseball.  
> — kennedy loser was a medic during this. finn james was part of the fighting. they were in love.  
> — finn fell into the bay and drowned during the battle. she was human at that point. when she emerges, she's not quite human anymore, when she comes out of the water just in time to see combs duende's incineration in season 4 & takes their place. this takes place right after that game.
> 
> kennedy loser is a butch lesbian and uses he/him pronouns. finn james is a femme lesbian and uses she/her pronouns.
> 
> written for the prompt "things you said at the kitchen table"!
> 
> title from hozier's as it was.

Finn thinks, sitting at Kennedy’s kitchen table, that things were much simpler under the echoing tides of the Bay.

_ Fish out of water, _ she thinks. She doesn’t laugh at it; she’s not sure if her mouth remembers how to make the sound, with sharper teeth than it had the last time she’d laughed. (How long has it been since she fell into the water and kept falling and falling?) It’s a miracle she remembers how to breathe at all, lungs coated in algae. She’s never quite figured out if she’s still alive or if her pulse is an echo the same way a ghost is; repetition and repetition without any real  _ meaning _ behind it. She’s had countless epiphanies one way or the other, and has come up with no real answers.

Calendar on Kennedy’s wall says it’s 20XX, day 63. It doesn’t mean much to her, the measuring of time; the premade dates on the calendar have been crossed out, replaced with the numbers of the blaseball season. The great return of blaseball happened at some point after she went under the water. She used to play casual games with Kennedy and her old crew — some of whom she’d seen on the field, though she couldn’t say if they’d recognized her or not — but nobody burned there the way Combs had only a few hours ago.

Finn had clawed her way to the surface of the water just in time to see it happen. Something had told her, something had told her: you need to be there.

“Do you need water? Food?” Kennedy speaks softly from the other side of the room. He’s always trying to take care of her — or he was, a decade-and-change ago. It must have been that long. It is the fourth season of blaseball, and Kennedy’s hair has gone gray at the temples; handsome and distinguished and tired. She thinks she could drown and drown again in the bags under his eyes.

“Ken,” Finn says. (The words bubble out of her; she can almost see the way they would have come out underwater, the spheres of air floating their way up to the surface.) “You know you don’t have to take care of me.”

“I, uh.” Ken’s faltering, which means she’s won. “I know. It’s been a while. I forgot. I don’t know.”

It’s been a long day. It was the bottom of the second inning when Finn surfaced. It was a lot longer, strike after strike after strike, until the game was over. Longer and longer still to get to Kennedy’s house, the half-waterway street leading to it, the sudden urge Finn had to jump in and pull Ken with her and swim away from all of this.

“S’okay,” Finn says. Lisps a little, her tongue no longer used to forming the sounds it once knew. Kennedy smiles at her, but it’s that  _ I’m doing this because I think it’s my job _ smile. She knew how to get a genuine one out of him, once. Isn’t sure if she remembers, but she can dig and dig in her memory until she finds something.

Finn stands, crosses the kitchen. She used to know where Kennedy kept everything; she’d slept over at his place enough times, whether for late-night planning sessions regarding the overthrowing of the Olde One or more mundane reasons. She used to know which drawer his spare toothbrushes were in and which cabinet he kept the backup supplies for his first-aid kit, which shirts in his closet she could fit into, the three separate places he stashed spare keys outside, “just in case.” She could’ve navigated that place in her sleep. Now, she digs through the cabinets until she finds a few bottles, then digs through the bottles until she finds a bottle of wine — covered in enough dust that she thinks he definitely hasn’t touched it since he moved in here, whenever that was, but probably drinkable.

Easier to find glasses; he always used to keep them in the cupboard directly to the left of the fridge, and the layout is swapped in this place, putting them on the right, but there they are, mirror-image. She pours two heaping glasses of disgustingly warm red wine, and walks back across the room, putting one in front of Ken.

“We’re not exactly twenty anymore, Finn,” Kennedy says, looking down at the cup with a furrow in his brow.

“It’s been a long day,” Finn says. Not quite a reply, but not  _ not _ a reply, either. She pokes her tongue between her teeth, contemplative; she wonders if it’s odd for him, her return, the ways she’s changed since she last saw him. (She thinks the last thing she told him was that she would stay safe. It wasn’t  _ quite _ a lie, in retrospect, but it took a very long time for it to become the truth.)

“Yeah,” Ken says. He makes a noise that could be a laugh, if not for how it tears at the edges, like paper and like eyes, both. “I can’t believe they’re  _ gone. _ Fuck.”

“Combs?” Ken nods. Finn knew Combs in passing, back when they were all fighting together. Kennedy stayed on the outskirts, acting as a medic for all of them, but Combs was a leader. Finn was somewhere in the middle; foolish enough to fight and to drown. “I’m sorry, Ken.”

“Did you — were you there? Or did you get there after — it was, uh, it was hard to tell —”

“I got there just before. I saw.”

“Okay,” and Ken takes in a shaky breath, takes a few quick sips of his wine; he keeps nearly putting it down and then deciding to drink more. “I don’t know if it matters, it’s just — we haven’t had an incineration since Nora, and that was two years ago, and — I guess you never met Nora, did you? She — she wasn’t around, back then, she was a college student when she joined the league. I thought we were safe. I didn’t think it could get  _ Combs.” _

“They didn’t deserve that,” Finn says. She knows that much. She might not have known Combs, really, but she saw the light and the fire and the ash. No one deserves that.

“And now the team is going to need a captain, and I — it’s going to be me. I know it is, and I — I want to do good by them. I care about them. But I’ve never been a leader, Finn.” She reaches out, puts one hand overtop his own; their fingers don’t entwine like they used to, webbing having grown between hers, but the touch is the warmest thing she’s felt in years, and she hopes it’s warm for him, too.

“God,” Kennedy says, looking down at their hands. “You’ve been back, what, six hours? And I’m already rambling like this. I’m —”

“Don’t apologize,” Finn says. “Don’t, Ken. I’m not going to act like I don’t know you just because I’ve been gone for a little while.”

“Eleven years,” he says, quietly.

It’s strange that a number could be put to the time she spent underwater. It’s strange to think such a thing could be  _ measured. _ Still, she nods. “Eleven years,” Finn says, “but I’m still who I was before, I think. Mostly. A little different, maybe, but — I’m still here for you.”

“I thought you were dead,” Kennedy says. He’s turned his hand palm-up underneath Finn’s, wrapped his fingers around it; not quite interlocked, but warm and warm and warm. “After it was done, and the Olde One was gone, they told me you fell in, and I…” He trails off.

“I don’t know if I died. I know I adapted. I know I tried to swim back to the surface, get back to you, but I could never reach it.”

“Until today.”

“Until today,” she repeats. “And I’m not going to leave again, Ken. Didn’t want to leave the first time. I might not remember how to be a person, at this point, but… I think I’m part of the game now, anyways, so I’m going to have to learn. And you’re going to need someone to lean on, when you’re captain. You don’t have to do it all on your own.”

It’s not that Finn expects them to leap back into… whatever it was they were, before. It’s difficult to expect something as undefined as that. But there’s still  _ something _ there; beyond the simple consistency of Kennedy being Kennedy, beyond the gentle way he’d asked her if she wanted to come back to his house after the game. The war against the Crab Mother had been long, longer than she’d been there for, but wherever Kennedy was was always a safehouse; him with his medic’s kit and his brave face and his seemingly boundless love for the people around him. It hasn't changed in the decade-plus in between then and now.

She feels safer here than she thought she would anywhere above water, after so long below.

Ken smiles. It’s a little watery around the edges, but Finn has plenty of experience with that. “Okay,” he says. His fingertips brush circles along the back of her hand, careful not to catch on the patches where scales have appeared. “I’m exhausted. It’s — well, you were right when you said it’d been a long day. Do you… do you have somewhere to go, or do you want to stay here?”

“If you don’t mind,” Finn says, because it’s polite. What she means is  _ please. _

“Of course I don’t. We’ve got a flight to Breckenridge in the morning, anyways — it’ll be easier if we drive over to BWI together. And —”

“And?”

Kennedy lifts Finn’s hand gently, slowly; there’s more than enough time for her to pull away if she wanted to, but why would she? He presses his lips to the back of it. When he pulls back, she pretends not to notice that his face is flushed; she pretends, too, not to wonder if she  _ can _ blush anymore.

“And I would like it, if you stayed.”

Finn grins. It’s the first time she’s really smiled in a very long time; it feels odd on her face, skin and scales and teeth moving in unfamiliar ways, but she thinks it will become familiar again with time.

(Later, in Kennedy’s bed, a few inches apart but facing each other, Finn will reach out again and put her hand on top of Kennedy’s again. “I missed you,” they’ll both say.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! hope you enjoyed! hit me up on tumblr @ rogueumpire or twitter @ eviljaylen, or find me in the crabitat discord server!


End file.
